“It is for me to apologize,” the woman said in a rich French accent, her voice low and husky. “I am sorry to intrude at dinnertime. But...are you William Mitchell?”
“I am,” I said, looking for a name tag or a bag of some sort with whatever product name she was trying to sell me emblazoned on it. But there was nothing. Just a large but tasteful handbag hanging from her shoulder.
“My name is Selene Michel. I am wondering if you knew a woman named Gisela Holländer?”
I frowned and shook my head.
“No. I’m sorry. I’ve never heard that name.”
She seemed to expect this, nodding, her eyes searching mine as she took in a deep breath, let it out, and then said a name I hadn’t heard in nearly six decades.
“And what about Kate Campbell?”
A million tiny moments flashed through my mind, a song long forgotten playing its tune in my head. I looked down at the bluebells in my hand that I hadn’t realized I’d removed from my pocket, and then back at the woman.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. That’s a name I’ve heard before.”
2
Kate
Somewhere in thePacific
Summer 1943
The metal framesof the bunks clattered in the cavernous metal belly of the plane as it hit a pocket of air and jerked us upward before dropping us several feet. The contents of the medical box in my hands rattled violently as the men strapped to their bunks groaned.
“Hang in there, boys,” I shouted.
I looked through the pale strands of hair now marring my sight at the handsome pilot grinning at me over his shoulder. The last amber light of the setting sun burst through the windshield in a fiery display, bathing him in a golden glow. If I were the kind of girl who swooned, that image of him would’ve done it.
But I wasn’t. At least not for a guy like Mac.
I’d met Mac my first day on the job. After he’d asked me out, his grin more leer than smile, and I’d promptly turned him down, we’d developed a brother-and-sister kind of relationship that none of the other women on base could understand.
“But he’s so dreamy” was the oft-touted opinion as they stared at his well-built physique, wavy blond hair, and pale green eyes.
But to me he was silly. A caricature of someone he’d probably seen in a movie once, studied, and tried to emulate. He was all seductive leans, slow grins, and piercing gazes. While the others fanned themselves in his presence, I had a hard time not rolling my eyes. Men like him would never turn my head. They were all show, no substance. I’d grown up around men like that. Slick specimens using their good looks and charm to persuade, lie, and manipulate. They were not to be trusted.
After my quick shutdown of Mac’s proposed date after we’d first met, he’d realized I’d seen through his game and immediately showed me another side to him. One I liked infinitely more. He had a quick wit, big heart, and was known to throw himself in the line of fire to protect his comrades. I respected him, even while still detesting the romantic methods he used on my friends.
“You good?” he shouted to me now.
I looked from him to the nineteen men lying in their bunks, bandaged, stitched, and in some cases their wounds left open due to infection or to relieve the pressure of flying on their stitched organs, muscles, and skin. None of them were okay, but no one seemed in any more pain than they’d been in before the turbulence.
“All good!” I yelled back over the noise of rattling metal.
As fast as it had started it stopped and I took in a long deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment, lifting my face toward the warmth coming through the window and stretching its way across the cold, rigid floor toward me. Despite being in the Pacific, where temperatures on the ground were often sweltering, it was always freezing at this high altitude. The cold seeped beneath the layers I’d pulled on earlier this morning in preparation for the cold ride. The pool of sweat between my breasts from two hours ago was now freezing. Regardless of the physical discomfort, and recognizing how minor mine was compared to what the men laid out before me were experiencing, I allowed myself to take in the moment of stillness. These were the moments I waited for. The reprieve from what came before, and what would surely come after. The breath that filled my body, slowing my adrenaline.
“Got some smoke up ahead,” the copilot, a man called Wes, warned. “Might get a bit bumpy again.”
I sat up and looked out the tiny window beside me, but all I saw was blue sky.
“What kind of smoke?” I asked, undoing my buckle and making my way to the front of the plane to have a look. I scanned the horizon for a glimpse of the base. “Is it us?”
“Not us, doll!” Mac said.
I made a face. I was not one of Mac’s dolls and took offense to being called one.
